The Vengeance Demons Series: Books 0-3 (The Vengeance Demons Series Boxset)

by Louisa Lo

  “What did this one do?” I asked.

  “Why, she’s an absolute slut. Slut, I tell ya. Slut!”

  “Huh?”

  “She’s been having very loud sex all hours of the day. Moaning and screaming. More than two voices most of the time. The noise stopped just before you arrived, but it’ll be back before you know it. The walls are thin here and I could hear everything. Even my neutered cats went into heat with all those god-awful sounds!”

  “We’re here because your neighbor is, er, having too much fun?” I had a very hard time keeping the laughter from my voice. I dared not chance a glance at Gregory. I was embarrassed, because the job turned out to be such a joke, and because we were talking about sex in the presence of a guy who’d more or less rejected me.

  “Ms. Whitehall, there’s no law against that,” Gregory explained gently. “What people do in their home is their own business.”

  Ms. Whitehall snorted. “That’s what the building management said, and the police, too. That’s why I called you guys here to get this fixed. Boy, am I in need of some good vengeance. I’m entitled to a good night’s sleep like anyone else, and my animals not traumatized!”

  A tomcat entered, sat down on the rug in the center of the room, and promptly licked his balls for all the world to see. Yeah, he was very traumatized indeed.

  “The noise has been keeping me up at night for days now,” Ms. Whitehall continued. “Why do you think I called you at six in the morning?”

  Gregory took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. I knew that posture. That was how he mentally steeled himself to refuse a vengeance job at the end of an initial interview. “As much as this noise is a nuisance to you, I’m afraid—”

  “We’ll do it,” I said.

  “But—” Gregory protested. I cut him off with a we’ll-talk-later look, and rushed him out of the apartment, promising Ms. Whitehall I would be in touch soon.

  “What the hell was that?” Gregory demanded once we were out in the hallway again.

  “Didn’t you see the dark circles under her eyes?” I asked. “She’s not faking it. This is really stressing her out.”

  “Be that as it may, you know full well she doesn’t have a leg to stand on for true vengeance.”

  “Who said anything about true vengeance?”

  “Then what are you talking about?” Gregory frowned.

  “Oh, come on, be a little more creative. There’s more than one way to resolve this issue.” The little trickster in me smiled. “We could put a super drying spell on the neighbor’s lubricant, if she uses any. Or we could use this new charm Fir just invented called Underneath Your Clothes, which makes people appear ten times less attractive once they’re in their birthday suit. Or we could scare away a would-be lover during the pre-coitus bathroom break with an illusion of mold in the toilet bowl. All this activated only after eleven at night, of course. I just want the neighbor to have fun that is a little less disruptive to others, not to stop having it altogether.”

  Gregory looked like he wasn’t sure if he should be horrified or impressed. “You know that the name of this business is called Clear Vengeance, right? With ‘vengeance’ being the operative word?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t think the customers care, as long as the job is done. This could be like a new side business or something, with me, your partner, bringing a trickster flare to the business. I mean, it’s not like you have to keep to a certain kind of services offered for tax purposes, right?”

  I got him there, and he knew it.

  It felt nice to give my inner trickster a chance to come out and play. It would give me something else to focus on. I refused to moon and act like a lovesick human teenager, though it was well within my rights, even socially acceptable to do so, when a vengeance demon met her solus iungere.

  Well, I was a hybrid. My trickster heritage was all about instant hookups and getting four kids young and all with different fathers. So who knew if a real soul mate was even in the cards anyway?

  Yeah, it would be my luck that I was fated to get just half a soul mate out of Gregory.

  Chapter Three

  8:30 A.M.

  Mini Job #1

  AS MERCENARIES, GREGORY AND I took on jobs both big and small. Most assignments averaged one to three days. But big assignments that had multiple phases, or involved a lot of preparation such as vetting and recon, could span over a month. We had two of those currently on the go.

  And then there were the straightforward mini jobs that were like power naps, but with money earned. They were quick, easy, and a nice way to get the cash flow going while waiting for the bigger jobs to pay off.

  For our first mini job of the day, we boarded a crowded GO Train carrying human office workers from the suburbs to downtown Toronto during the morning rush hour. We headed for the Quiet Zone, a designated noise-reduced area on the upper level of the train. It was a sanctuary for the long commuters to relax and get some shuteye, to prepare for another day of keeping their noses to the grindstone.

  Too bad not everyone respected that intended purpose.

  “…I crunched some numbers. Sales are up this month by twenty-three percent, forty-six point four percent year-on-year,” a loud voice boomed in the Quiet Zone. “We’re going to have no problem hitting the EAC. And the FRS is going to hit the roof. I suggest implementing the L.A.D.D.E.R right away, and deliver some high-value, high-impact, high-functioning…”

  Our target was Cameron Bell, junior account manager at a large corporation, executive-in-training. He had the habit of making long business calls in the Quiet Zone, often for the duration of the entire train ride, much to the annoyance of his fellow commuters. On top of creating the illusion to his colleagues that he was in the office already when he was still on his way there, he thrived on subjecting the whole train to accounts of his self-proclaimed success with inflated numbers and the latest buzz words, half of which he misused anyway.

  Nobody liked a wannabe.

  The last thing people who had to put up with the bullshit of the business world needed was to listen to more of it in their own spare time. On their way to work, people were fantasizing about time with their family, their weekend at the cottage, and their own retirement. They didn’t need this endless blah, blah, blah in their moment of tranquility.

  So a group of them banded together and hired me and Gregory.

  Mr. Bell had just gotten onto another phone call. An international conference call by the sound of it. High stake. He was just launching into an overview of his achievements this quarter when the earphone of his neighbor’s smart phone came loose, interrupting his speech with the sound of a military-inspired app game: thunderous footsteps, shooting, explosion, curse words, etc.

  When Mr. Bell tried to talk over the noise, there came the sound of a baby wailing, and a dog’s frantic barking like it was the end of the world.

  Mr. Bell looked around, but found that nobody else was hearing what he was hearing, and there were no babies or dogs anywhere on the train. “No, sir. I’m not still at home…of course this presentation is important to me. I’ll call you back when I get to the office…no, I’m not still at home. I swear…”

  I repressed a smile. The whole purpose of the noise was to stop the phone call, but the boss thinking our target was playing hooky while talking shit out of his ass was an unexpected but happy bonus.

  From now on, for a year, every time the guy made such a phone call on the train, noise would ensue, may it be club music, sound of bacon sizzling, or the crying and berating of a jealous girlfriend.

  Ha, try to project a sense of professionalism with that! He wanted to do business in public? Then he had to put up with the downside of it.

  And yes, at the end of the year our clients could renew the contract at the reduced price of 20 percent off. This was, after all, a business.

  Get your copy of VENGEANCE FOR HIRE today!

  This Is Where The Author Shamelessly Begs You To Leave a Review…

&nbs
p; Did you enjoy THE VENGEANCE DEMONS SERIES BOOK 0-3? If so, I would really appreciate it if you could write a review on Goodreads and/or your online retailer!

  Be a Vengeful Vixen!

  I’d love to have you join my Facebook reader group! Click on this link, or search “Vengeful Vixens Louisa Lo” on Facebook.

  Sign up for my mailing list for the latest news and offers!